Ms. Linda's Pick
Second Star
By: Alyssa B. Sheinmel
I asked for this book from netgalley quite a while ago, and got turned down, so I've been waiting to read this one. I was excited about it involving the characters of Peter Pan in a new setting. I mean, Peter Pan as a surfer boy? How could that not sound cool? Unfortunately, however, this book just didn't meet my expectations.
Here is the main issue: how much of what Wendy says happened, happened? When she wakes up in the hospital, after nearly drowning, the hospital says a cocktail of rare chemicals was found in her bloodstream. She did take (fairy) dust once that she remembers, back when she had to talk to Jas, and the only way into his party was to take the drug. But did she really only take it once? When she revisits Kensington, after her parents and therapist are becoming convinced she's okay again, the houses are nothing like she remembered. Pete's beach is gone, as well as the staircase leading from his house down to the beach. So...did she ever really go to Kensington? Did she find it by mistake one day and concoct, in her mind, all the things that supposedly happened there? Did she, in her grief, like her therapist says, make up the whole story in her head to deal with her brothers' deaths?
I realize this is a Peter Pan retelling, and that there is magic at work in the story. I get that. And yes, at the end of the book, we know Pete and Jas are, indeed, real. We know because of the photo Wendy receives just as she's about to leave for Stanford. But how much of the story is the truth, and how much did she fabricate? Are we supposed to believe Kensington is really a Neverland, where the kids never age? Or were Hughie and Matt and the other surfer boys never really there to begin with? How much was magic? I suppose its the kind of story where each reader has to make up their mind about what to believe. And while I loved the writing, loved seeing everything through Wendy's eyes, I feel betrayed by her at the same time. I feel that she wasn't totally honest with us, the readers, or herself. I also wasn't a fan of her deciding to just end it all and wanting to join her brothers at the bottom of the ocean. And her brothers: are they really dead? Belle said they are, that she tried to keep them from surfing Witch Tree earlier. She said she saw them go down and never come up. But Belle wasn't in the picture with Jas and Pete (Wendy thinks because it was taken when they were still getting along, before Belle and dust and everything), so was she just a fabrication? I honestly don't know.
And maybe there's where the magic from Peter Pan kicks in. You aren't supposed to know anything for sure. All you're supposed to know is Wendy is in mourning over John and Michael. She's a lost soul, trying to find her way in a world that has upended on her, and she's clinging to whatever reality she can, whether its real or fabricated with the help of drugs. It reminds me of the song "Hotel California," by the Eagles. How much of that is real? Any of it? None of it? Maybe it's just California. I live in Michigan. We don't have a lot of mysticism here.
At any rate, I am glad I read it. I'm not happy with the ending, but it's because I expected something more solid, more gratifying. The writing is gorgeous. Honestly. That's the only word I can think to call it. And I guess, in the end, everyone has to make their own decision about what was real. My guess? I'd like to think it was all real, but I feel like I should know better, that I'm being tricked by Wendy. So I'll leave it this way: Pete and Jas, in some form, were real. Everything else is conjecture.
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